Thor’s Short Cutshttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net
Doubt well, do what you can, then let it be.Wed, 09 Apr 2014 12:53:26 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.17277. Democracy – Comment on a Proposalhttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2014/04/09/277-democracy-comment-on-a-proposal/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2014/04/09/277-democracy-comment-on-a-proposal/#respondWed, 09 Apr 2014 12:53:26 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=380Continue reading →]]>This short post adds to a recent discussion in The World Post:

Kudos to the writers for even thinking about the democracy problem. The American version of shielded plutocracy concealed in a populist sleeve is definitely no longer a model that imaginations like mine (and a few billion others) outside of the United States aspire to. The wedding cake proposal in this article is already familiar in parts. Think of the progression from town governments to national representation and you have some inkling of the space for incompetence and manipulation.

The actual management of social, economic and political choices which are of citizen interest is at the heart of the governance problem, whether it is some kind of democratic governance or a more arbitrary alternative. Votes offer an option of yes or no. Life is harder than that. There is an inherent problem with binary choices in a complex society. Most important questions are nuanced. We could take almost any votable question and find within it a host of other questions. Most respondents will not have the imagination to see the impinging issues on the lead query. That is their responses will be shallow, and in any real political campaign easily swayed by partisan argument.

For any new political system to make a fresh contribution, it needs to deal with getting sophisticated responses from a largely uninformed populace. That is, it needs to find a way to encourage large numbers of people to make considered responses to cascades of entailed problems, and then arrive at a workable outcome. Even in terms of Internet technology that is rather difficult. At a human level it is exceptionally difficult to hold the attention of enough of the people for enough of the time to extract something valuable. And who is to actually make these democratic choices? Average reading age is less than 14 years. In supposedly advanced states like America and Australia, functional illiteracy (as in not being able to read labels on bottles) hovers around 50% of the population. I suspect that functional innumeracy approaches about 70%. I read somewhere that about 7% of Americans had even the most elementary grasp of basic scientific principles (3% in China). None of these people are going away anytime soon. Of the 50% who can read a jam jar, most would not be able to comprehend this post. In other words, meaningful democracy in complex societies is a very hard problem.

Perhaps the best beginning for improving national governance would be to find some kind of technical compromise between meaningless yes/no votes and presenting the rather nuanced issues behind important questions. That is, only a small minority of people are going to follow a posting like this for the simple reason that only a minority of people (even amongst those with a college education) are comfortable with extended prose argumentation. A sample compromise might be a competent editor extracting the salient argument points in (for example) competing analyses of political choices, and linking them into a visual network, a mind map. Clever technology might overlay that mind map with similar visual networks from other articles to show up dominant themes. Data mining technologies, in a crude way, are going in this direction already. For anyone interested, I have informally explored some of the territory in the governance problem in a couple of recent essays: “The Democracy Problem” at http://www.academia.edu/3997584/The_Democracy_Problem and “What will be the dominant ideologies of the 21st Century” at http://www.academia.edu/5681348/What_will_be_the_dominant_ideologies_of_the_21st_Century .

]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2014/04/09/277-democracy-comment-on-a-proposal/feed/0276. The Mental God Bothttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2014/02/01/276-the-mental-god-bot/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2014/02/01/276-the-mental-god-bot/#respondSat, 01 Feb 2014 07:41:21 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=376Continue reading →]]>Almost every kind of god seems to be somebody’s favourite. Most of them make an easy target for satire. Explanatory evidence for a gent on a thundercloud seems to be thin in the air after all. Yet a perfectly reasonable account of one kind of god is available from a careful observation of the human mind. Firstly it is clear enough that consciousness is a mere pinprick of light illuminating one fraction at a time of the myriad computations in our brains. Secondly most philosophers agree that there is no single “I” or self. Our lives involve multiple roles, and the fragment of consciousness which becomes “I” in each of them can be quite distinct. Thirdly, our behaviours often involve role playing. We typically have a superordinate self behind the mask editing what is presented to the world. Finally, given this fragmentation of self, it may be a small step to construct a superordinate “bot”, a kind of mental agent, to provide a private integration and rationalization for our diverse identities. It might make sense to call this superordinate agent bot “god”, and make even more sense to identify it with a socially advertised supreme being called “God”. That is, the public God offers a very reassuring identity and validation for all the private gods of individuals. The individuals in their private subjective worlds can reinterpret the public God for private convenience without fear of rebuke. They may not even be conscious hypocrites, but from the evidence of history they will defend to the death that socially shared public version of their God.
]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2014/02/01/276-the-mental-god-bot/feed/0275. Live and Let Livehttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/12/29/275-live-and-let-live/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/12/29/275-live-and-let-live/#respondSun, 29 Dec 2013 01:03:57 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=372Continue reading →]]>They may not be your kind of people. They may not even be my kind of people. Come to think of it, I’m probably not your kind of person. Whatever. They, you, me – we’ve all been here since the (human) world began, or at least yobos like us. No religion, ideology, culture, reign of terror, or advertising agency has ever been able to change the whole daggy mix. So what do you want to do about it? Stand on a street corner and preach to the converted? Retreat to your limousine and sort them into your superior type and the other trash? Be a predator to prey on the unwary and unwise? Screw anything that moves and get wasted while the party lasts? Hope for a safe life of suburban gossip, the small world of office hello-friendships and fear of the tabloid murder rate? Well, it’s your call. Me? I’m glad that it takes all kinds of people to make the world go around. There would be no stories without them. I don’t do bars, usually, but I understood my father who used to say before stumbling off to find a new dive, desperate to escape his desolate home life, “gotta go check out the local wildlife”.
]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/12/29/275-live-and-let-live/feed/0274. Come the Revolutionhttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/12/01/274-come-the-revolution/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/12/01/274-come-the-revolution/#respondSun, 01 Dec 2013 03:29:19 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=366Continue reading →]]>You talk too much about what you’ve seen and what you think. While the mafia are still in charge of the asylum they will find a law to bury you alive (McMillan-Scott, Edward MEP (n.d.) “Liu Xiaobo: biography”. Charter 08 for reform and democracy in China website, hosted by the European Parliament, online @ http://www.charter08.eu/5.htmlor Escobar, Pepe (August 2, 2013) “Our man in Moscow”. Asia Times, online @ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01–020813.html ).

]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/12/01/274-come-the-revolution/feed/0273. What Is Going On Here?http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/09/19/273-what-is-going-on-here/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/09/19/273-what-is-going-on-here/#respondThu, 19 Sep 2013 06:52:40 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=362Continue reading →]]>Because they are mega-everything, states like China and the USA become test paradigms for what can go right and wrong in managing humans. Consider these:

1) The US has the world’s largest and most sophisticated assembly of spying organizations. They collect what is laughably called “intelligence” on all of us, legally and often illegally. However this vast mass of intelligence assets has repeatedly been unable to anticipate attacks upon its own integrity by its own personnel (who are surely more spied upon than anybody else): in the first instance from information leaks by thoughtful and conscientious insiders (Manning, Snowden, John Kiriakou … there are others too), as well as from a long history of soldiers shooting fellow soldiers; or on a much larger scale from the “war on drugs” – read failure to evaluate the real meaning of “intelligence” from massive surveillance – which has generated an explosion of violence and criminality (shades of the 1920s-30s Prohibition); and of course a from long list of wars with failure sourced in endless misinformation and self-deception; and about to break: a tsunami of lost business for US corporations which are now regarded as agents of US spying and no longer trusted worldwide.

2) The US has the world’s most “sophisticated” health care system. Result: also the world’s most expensive health care system. Its outcomes have resulted in rising mortality, an increase in diseases, and ever-falling life expectancy for US citizens relative to those in other countries, and about 62% of bankruptcies due to medical emergency (so this is “intelligence”?).

3) The US has the world’s best universities. A few. It also has one of the world’s most fragmented and least successful education systems amongst advanced nations, with graduates indebted for decades. It would be tiresome to list the failures here, but basically the mess is an ideologically driven, hysterical melt-down, best understood by the populist contempt for teachers.

Issues 4), 5), 6) … why go on?

So Dagwood Bumstead, prepare a simple solution, an executive summary in 50 words or less for your lobotomized neighbourhood director… Well Mr Dithers, the problem is partly that nobody really knows how to manage anything as complicated as a large, technically advanced country. Spin doesn’t cut it. Exceptionalism is another word for arrogance. But there are other basic missing ingredients too, such as out of fashion ideas like honesty (from which comes real trust), genuine respect for others (don’t spy on them), cooperation (not coercion), and actually wanting to do your job well (CV fluff and salary level are not evidence). Oh, and leadership the rest of us can believe in…

]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/09/19/273-what-is-going-on-here/feed/0272. God, definedhttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/09/04/272-god-defined/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/09/04/272-god-defined/#respondWed, 04 Sep 2013 02:59:22 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=357Continue reading →]]>God : definition: A form of socially shared delusion implying a sentient, omniscient, omnipotent, non-human force which is nevertheless concerned with human actions. Often used subconsciously by individuals to avoid ego responsibility for certain thoughts and actions. Used socially by power seekers as a proxy to validate and enforce control over the thoughts and behaviours of others. Often a convenient metaphor or figure of speech to indicate a totality or unseen force, and used as such even by those uncommitted to any religion. As a sociological phenomenon the complex God symbol has much in common with other symbols of absolutist ideology (e.g. in modern times, Communism, Capitalism .. etc). Ideological symbolism, including the God delusion, is often defended violently since it becomes entwined closely with feelings of personal identity and group identity, as well as reflecting much shared cultural behaviour. In many jurisdictions God/Ideological symbolism is constructed into formal provisions of community law and used to divide good (those who comply with the entailed beliefs and behaviours) from bad (those who do no comply with the entailed beliefs and behaviours). In all national and cultural jurisdictions large numbers of pragmatic individuals have always remained silent in private rejection of widely accepted God/Ideological belief and institutional frameworks since for social and professional reasons a public challenge would usually yield little personal advantage, but ensure significant personal disadvantages.
]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/09/04/272-god-defined/feed/0271. Security & the Neo-feudalists – One Dimensional Chesshttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/08/03/271-security-the-neo-feudalists-one-dimensional-chess/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/08/03/271-security-the-neo-feudalists-one-dimensional-chess/#respondSat, 03 Aug 2013 09:19:07 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=352Continue reading →]]>A few centuries ago Europe was dotted with castle fortresses, surrounded by supposedly impregnable stone walls and moats of water. Barricaded in these castles were lords and ladies, sucking the life out of the peasant farms around them, and blowing the surplus on weapons, wars and gluttony. They were war-lords, or in modern parlance, mafia godfathers. Their current incarnations are a bit more complicated. They go by the names of presidents, prime ministers, corporate chieftains etc, but their fantasies and fears are still essentially feudal. “Security” is their obsession. Day and night they fear for their own arses, while whole populations are conned into paying the bills for their depravity. And as in the Middle Ages, these neo-feudalists gold-plating their scorpion nests in Washington, Beijing, Moscow etc have induced new breeds of outlaws. For every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For the storytellers amongst us, the present disorders humbling those who would be gods is a rich harvest of irony. A while back, we had hopes for Barack Obama, but he turns out to be another sock puppet, with his minders, the generals and the money-lenders, tussling inside his sock. The greatest cheat-game in history, new toys to steal the private lives and secrets of everyone on the planet (Prism, NSA XKeyscore etc), has been busted wide open by a gent called Edward Snowden, dismissed as a lowly techie. It turns out that Snowden was a systems design analyst, tasked with finding weaknesses in the whole monster machine. He had keys to every door in the castle, and horror of horrors, genuine intelligence. Unlike the lawyers and MBas who pretend to “manage” our civilization, he actually understands both the politics and the technology. He skipped ahead of them to Hong Kong, from whence the Washington lords, consumed by their own arrogance, drove him to Moscow and forced him to stay there. They forced a man like Snowden, awash with all their security secrets, into the arms of a spymaster like Vladimir Putin. Now there was brilliance, duh? With half a brain between them, they could have let Snowden slip off to South America and picked him up easily. Instead Obama and his military minders have proved conclusively that they lack the competence, integrity and calibre to manage or interpret the torrents of information about all of us which they have stolen. There is a theory going around that somebody in this game is playing eleven-dimensional chess, Matrix style. If so, Snowden and Putin have outclassed the Washington scorpions on every move.

]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/08/03/271-security-the-neo-feudalists-one-dimensional-chess/feed/0270. King Kong and Big Datahttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/07/22/270-king-kong-and-big-data/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/07/22/270-king-kong-and-big-data/#respondMon, 22 Jul 2013 05:02:54 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=345Continue reading →]]>Big data is an enabling technology. That is, it enables both risks and rewards, according the skills and judgements of those who engage it (http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/it-pro/business-it/how-big-data-can-result-in-bad-data-20130720-hv11k.html?rand=8744926). Human beings have never been known to turn down an enabling technology, regardless of the consequence that it will enable catastrophes as well as rewards.

Take the motor vehicle: “There have been more traffic related fatalities around the world, since the first automobile was made, than all the deaths from all global conflicts over the past 3000 years combined” (http://www.shaundejager.com/psychology-of-our-driving-culture-affects-our-safety/). With cars the carnage has been sufficient for us to impose some burden of legal care on drivers (without stellar success). No such sanction, or even systematic care, is ever likely to be the case with the potentially catastrophic misinterpretation of big data by hamburger driven office workers.

Edward Snowden is right: by collecting limitless data on all of us, the American “security” juggernaut, Prism, and its industry analogues, have limitless potential to generate expensive errors or even tragedy through the poor judgements of misguided human controllers. At a national level, Australia is deeply enmeshed in the activities of the United States Defense establishment’s big data plays, both because of the wholesale plundering of our private and business communications, but formally through intelligence establishments such as those at Pine Gap (http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/it-pro/security-it/australian-outback-station-at-forefront-of-us-spying-arsenal-20130720-hv10h.html). That is, whatever brings those bunnies to grief in the name of security will also bring us to grief. Not if, but when.

]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/07/22/270-king-kong-and-big-data/feed/0269. Almost the same, almost forever (but not quite)http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/07/19/269-almost-the-same-almost-forever-but-not-quite/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/07/19/269-almost-the-same-almost-forever-but-not-quite/#respondFri, 19 Jul 2013 12:45:39 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=341Continue reading →]]>Nothing in nature ever repeats itself. Not quite. No two heartbeats are ever the same. No two orbits of the earth around the sun are ever the same. No two human faces are ever the same, no two trees, or rocks or even motor cars. Often the differences are tiny, infinitesimal. We live comfortably expecting the sun to rise tomorrow. Yet no mathematical equation can predict when the orbit of one planet will be just different enough, will cross a chaotic threshold and spin off into space alone, and throw us into the eye of the sun. No doctor can predict when the never-quite-the-same oscillations of your heart muscle will become chaotic and kill you. And no fortune-teller, priest, politician or scientist can navigate you to a heaven in this life or any life governed by the whimsical paths of strange-attractors.
]]>http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/07/19/269-almost-the-same-almost-forever-but-not-quite/feed/0268. Trouble with the Sock Godhttp://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/07/08/268-trouble-with-the-sock-god/
http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/2013/07/08/268-trouble-with-the-sock-god/#respondMon, 08 Jul 2013 07:27:27 +0000http://thorshortcuts.byeways.net/?p=336Continue reading →]]>Have you noticed? It’s the small gods who always make trouble. Take the Sock God. Without fail, each time I wash clothes, the Sock God sneaks in and steals a sock. Once I tried to beat the bugger by buying all black socks, so I could match the orphans. Nope. You wouldn’t believe how many shades of black there are. Then there is the Street God. A street can be completely empty. Then as soon as I want to cross it on foot, three cars, a motorcycle and an ambulance will appear from all directions. Now you know very well that if you decide to pay for something with all the metal collecting in your pocket, the Little Money God will howl with laughter and make sure you are 5 cents short. Then, reluctantly using a $5 note, the shop girl will find that she has to give you $3 of change in 10 cent coins. Oh, and never, ever hint to yourself that something is important or urgent to do. A merry team of Trip Up Gods will make sure that forget to bring your wallet, twist your ankle in a rush, and find that the subway line is closed for maintenance. What kind of mischief will they have for us when we finally get to heaven?
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